---
title: "Hydrogen feeds the world"
canonical_url: "https://www.smoltek.com/hydrogen-feeds-the-world/6691/"
date: 2024-02-08
author: "Thomas Barregren"
featured_image: "https://www.smoltek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/japanese-bathhouse.webp"
categories:
  - name: "IR Blog Posts"
    url: "https://www.smoltek.com/category/ir-blog-posts.md"
tags:
  - name: "ammonia"
    url: "https://www.smoltek.com/topic/ammonia.md"
  - name: "fertilizer"
    url: "https://www.smoltek.com/topic/fertilizer.md"
  - name: "hydrogen"
    url: "https://www.smoltek.com/topic/hydrogen.md"
---

# Hydrogen feeds the world

Which mod­ern inven­tion has meant the most to human­i­ty? The steam engine, train, air­plane, car, space rock­et, nuclear pow­er, radio, tele­vi­sion, com­put­er, AI, …? The list of con­tenders is long. But none of them can match…

Sound a fan­fare, please!

…the Haber-Bosch process.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#haber-bosch)**Haber & Bosch**

Haber and Bosch!? What have Peter Haber and Har­ry Bosch done for human­i­ty? you ask in disbelief.

Well, they have enter­tained us. At least a few of us. Peter Haber is a Swedish actor best known for play­ing Mar­tin Beck, and Har­ry Bosch is a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter in Michael Connelly’s nov­els. But they are, of course, not the Haber and Bosch behind the mod­ern inven­tion that has meant the most to humanity.

The Haber and Bosch I am talk­ing about are the Ger­man chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. They devel­oped a chem­i­cal process in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry that now car­ries their name. This process has been jus­ti­fi­ably described as “the most impor­tant inven­tion of the twen­ti­eth century.”

But before we dig into what the process does and why it deserves the first spot above all oth­er con­tenders, we need to take a deep breath and get some context.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#nitrogen)**Nitrogen**

The breath we just took con­tained 78 per­cent nitro­gen gas (N2). 78.1 per­cent, to be exact. That makes nitro­gen (N), by far, the most com­mon ele­ment in the air we breathe. It is also one of the most com­mon  ele­ments in the whole universe.

Nitro­gen is also one of the build­ing blocks of life. Lit­er­al­ly. It’s in amino acids, pro­teins, DNA, RNA and ATP. (The lat­ter is the fuel that our cells run on.)

But it’s not by breath­ing air that your body gets the nitro­gen it needs.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#the-nutrient-source-of-nitrogen)**The nutrient source of nitrogen**

You get nitro­gen by eat­ing plants, or by eat­ing ani­mals that have pre­vi­ous­ly eat­en plants, or by eat­ing ani­mals that have pre­vi­ous­ly eat­en oth­er ani­mals that have pre­vi­ous­ly eaten…

Ok, you get the pic­ture. The food chain. The point is that plants are ulti­mate­ly our source of nitro­gen intake.

But how does the nitro­gen get into the plants?

Sim­ple: their roots absorb it from the soil they grow in.

But how does the nitro­gen end up in the soil? you ask relentlessly.

Today, the pri­ma­ry source is nitro­gen fer­til­iz­er that farm­ers spread on fields. But let’s hold off on that. We start by look­ing at how nature does it with­out the help of humans.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#nitrogen-fixation)**Nitrogen fixation**

Enter the scene: Diazotrophs.

What?

*Dia­zotrophs* is a col­lec­tive name for bac­te­ria and oth­er microor­gan­isms that con­vert nitro­gen in the air into nitro­gen com­pounds, main­ly ammo­nia (NH3), which plants can take up. This process is called *nitro­gen fix­a­tion*.

Despite all the excit­ing infor­ma­tion about nitro­gen, you may won­der when we will get to hydro­gen. After all, that’s what you’re inter­est­ed in. Look no fur­ther than the chem­i­cal for­mu­la for ammo­nia – NH3 – and you might see where I’m going. There are three hydro­gen atoms per nitro­gen atom.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#nitrogens-circle-of-life)**Nitrogen’s circle of life**

When plants die, bac­te­ria and fun­gi sink their teeth into the remains. (Fig­u­ra­tive­ly speak­ing, of course; bac­te­ria and fun­gi have no teeth.) The same thing even­tu­al­ly hap­pens to ani­mals and humans as well. Their remains con­tain nitro­gen com­pounds (pro­teins, DNA, RNA, and so on). Some microbes can break these down, releas­ing nitro­gen into the atmos­phere. This process is called *den­i­tri­fi­ca­tion*.Nitro­gen fix­a­tion and den­i­tri­fi­ca­tion are thus part of the great cir­cle of life, which Mufasa teach­es young Sim­ba in the movie The Lion King. This cycle is known in sci­ence as the *nitro­gen cycle*.

Lis­ten to the song *Cir­cle Of Life* from the movie The Lion King.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#need-for-fertilizers)**Need for fertilizers**

Does the nitro­gen cycle go by itself?

If nature is left to take care of itself, the nitro­gen cycle ticks along with­out any prob­lems. But as soon as human­i­ty put the plow in the ground and start­ed farm­ing, the bal­ance was disturbed.

If crops are grown in the same place over a few years, the plants take up more nitro­gen from the soil than nat­ur­al process­es can restore. This is why humans have come up with strate­gies such as slash-and-burn agri­cul­ture, crop rota­tion, and fertilization.

The prac­tice of fer­til­iza­tion dates back to ancient times, with ear­ly civ­i­liza­tions such as the Sume­ri­ans and Egyp­tians using manure to enrich soil around 2000 BCE. This ear­ly form of fer­til­iza­tion helped improve crop yields, show­cas­ing human­i­ty’s ini­tial under­stand­ing of enhanc­ing soil fer­til­i­ty for agri­cul­tur­al purposes.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#father-of-the-fertilizer-industry)**Father of the fertilizer industry**

Manure and humus have been used as fer­til­iz­ers since the time of the Sume­ri­ans and the Egyp­tians. How­ev­er, the idea of cre­at­ing a syn­thet­ic fer­til­iz­er was not born until the 19th century.

In his ground­break­ing book *Die organ­is­che Chemie in ihrer Anwen­dung auf Agri­cul­tur und Phys­i­olo­gie*, first pub­lished in 1840, the Ger­man chemist Jus­tus von Liebig argued that nitro­gen com­pounds, such as ammo­nia, were need­ed to grow the health­i­est crops pos­si­ble. This earned him the epi­thet “father of the fer­til­iz­er industry.”

Jus­tus von Liebig’s the­o­ry led to a rush for nitro­gen at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry. Salt­peter was mined with an unprece­dent­ed fren­zy, and trop­i­cal rocks were scraped for guano.

Watch the video to learn about how the demand for guano led the U.S. to pass a law giv­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens exclu­sive rights to guano on unclaimed islands.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#sources-of-nitrogen-fertilizers)**Sources of nitrogen fertilizers**

But salt­peter mines and bird poop only went so far.

At the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, it was real­ized that nat­ur­al sources were not suf­fi­cient to meet future needs. This sparked the idea of some­how extract­ing nitro­gen direct­ly from thin air.

Sev­er­al meth­ods were devel­oped to fix the nitro­gen in the air. But it was not until the begin­ning of the next cen­tu­ry that the real break­through came, albeit with a hum­ble beginning.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#ammonia-from-thin-air)**Ammonia from thin air**

In 1905, Fritz Haber pro­duced a small amount of ammo­nia by mix­ing nitro­gen and hydro­gen at 1,000 °C in the pres­ence of an iron cat­a­lyst. How­ev­er, the high tem­per­a­ture made the method impractical.

Over the next few years, Fritz Haber refined his tech­nique. In March 1909, he pre­sent­ed a method in which the tem­per­a­ture had been reduced to the more man­age­able range of 500–600 °C. This was accom­plished with high pres­sure. The process requires almost 200 times the air pres­sure (20 MPa).

But there was a caveat. The ammo­nia was pro­duced drop by drop; it took 8 hours to pro­duce a sin­gle liter of ammo­nia. Nev­er­the­less, Fritz Haber had demon­strat­ed a viable solu­tion for extract­ing nitro­gen from the air and fix­ing it as ammonia.

Watch the video for more infor­ma­tion on Fritz Haber.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#haber-bosch-process)**Haber-Bosch process**

The Ger­man chem­i­cal com­pa­ny BASF pur­chased the rights to the process and tasked Carl Bosch with scal­ing up Haber’s table­top machine to indus­tri­al scale. Four years lat­er, the BASF fac­to­ry in Oppau pro­duced five tons of ammo­nia – per day.

This is why the process is named after the two men: *The Haber-Bosch process*.

Haber and Bosch were award­ed the Nobel Prize in 1918 and 1931, respec­tive­ly, for their work in solv­ing the chem­i­cal and engi­neer­ing prob­lems of large-scale, con­tin­u­ous flow and high-pres­sure technology.

![Fritz Haber Carl Bosch](https://www.smoltek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/fritz-haber-carl-bosch-600x400.webp)

Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#telling-correlation)**Telling correlation**

Ini­tial­ly, Haber-Bosch process was main­ly used to pro­duce ammo­nia for the mil­i­tary and indus­try, but after the Sec­ond World War, the use of ammo­nia as a nitro­gen fer­til­iz­er in agri­cul­ture exploded.

The increased use of syn­thet­ic nitro­gen fer­til­iz­er led to high­er yields that sup­port­ed a rapid­ly grow­ing pop­u­la­tion. That’s why Pro­fes­sor Vaclav Smil [wrote](https://www.nature.com/articles/22672) in the pres­ti­gious sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Nature that the Haber-Bosch process ”is the most impor­tant inven­tion of the twen­ti­eth century.”

![Global World Population And Fertiliser Use ](https://www.smoltek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/global-world-population-and-fertiliser-use-600x400.webp)

Source: N. Alexan­dratos and J. Bru­ins­ma, *World Agri­cul­ture Towards 2030⁄2050: The 2012 Revi­sion*, Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Nations, ESA Work­ing Paper No. 12–03, June 2012.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#high-cost-for-feeding-the-world)**High cost for feeding the world**

An often-quot­ed sta­tis­tic is that nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers are respon­si­ble for feed­ing half the world’s population.

Since this fer­til­iz­er is pro­duced through the Haber-Bosch process by con­vert­ing hydro­gen, I think it’s fair to say that hydro­gen feeds the world.

Don’t you agree?

But the mass adop­tion of syn­thet­ic fer­til­iz­ers has come at a high cost to the envi­ron­ment: harm­ful algal blooms, soil acid­i­fi­ca­tion, and mas­sive green­house gas emissions.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#greenhouse-effect)**Greenhouse effect**

A [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2780-0) esti­mates that the pro­duc­tion and use of nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers, both organ­ic and syn­thet­ic, in food-grow­ing accounts for around 5 per­cent of glob­al green­house gas emis­sions and that this could threat­en efforts to keep glob­al warm­ing below 2 °C.

Nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers con­tribute to the green­house effect in many ways.

One issue is that far from all fer­til­iz­er is absorbed by plants, and what remains is bro­ken down by microbes in the soil, pro­duc­ing laugh­ing gas (N2O).

That’s not fun­ny at all. (Pun intend­ed, of course.)

Laugh­ing gas, or nitrous oxide, which is its chem­i­cal name, is a green­house gas almost 300 times more potent than car­bon diox­ide (CO2).

But anoth­er major source is the pro­duc­tion itself. The man­u­fac­ture of arti­fi­cial fer­til­iz­ers is respon­si­ble for almost 1.5 per­cent of total glob­al CO2 emissions.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#energy-hungry-monster)**Energy-hungry monster**

The Haber-Bosch process is car­ried out at high tem­per­a­tures and pres­sure, turn­ing the pro­duc­tion plants into ener­gy-hun­gry mon­sters. The ener­gy comes from burn­ing nat­ur­al gas.

Nat­ur­al gas is also used to pro­duce gray hydro­gen, which is the feed­stock in the Haber-Bosch process. Much hydro­gen is need­ed. Remem­ber that form­ing ammo­nia takes three hydro­gen atoms per nitro­gen atom (NH3).

About 40 per­cent of the fos­sil gas input into the process is burned to fuel the reac­tion, with the remain­ing 60 per­cent being used as feedstock.

Pro­duc­ing ammo­nia fer­til­iz­ers is respon­si­ble for about 1 per­cent of all glob­al ener­gy use and 1.4 per­cent of CO2 emissions.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#carbon-dioxide-polluter)**Carbon dioxide polluter**

More than 180 mil­lion met­ric tons of ammo­nia are pro­duced annu­al­ly. Near­ly 90 per­cent of ammo­nia is used to pro­duce syn­thet­ic nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers (includ­ing urea, ammo­ni­um nitrate, and ammo­ni­um phosphate).

Pro­duc­ing this mas­sive amount of ammo­nia requires more than 32 mil­lion met­ric tons of hydro­gen. Today, more than 95 per­cent of this hydro­gen is pro­duced from nat­ur­al gas and coal.

To pro­duce 32 mil­lion tons of hydro­gen by steam methane reform­ing (SMR), the most com­mon method, approx­i­mate­ly 80 mil­lion tons of nat­ur­al gas are required, assum­ing an effi­cien­cy rate of 80 per­cent for the SMR process.

Thus, we can cal­cu­late that 68 mil­lion tons of nat­ur­al gas are need­ed just as a feed­stock in the pro­duc­tion of nitrite fer­til­iz­er. The Haber-Bosch process con­sumes an addi­tion­al 45 mil­lion tons of nat­ur­al gas as fuel. In total, 113 mil­lion tons of nat­ur­al gas are need­ed annu­al­ly to pro­duce syn­thet­ic nitro­gen fertilizers.

When all this nat­ur­al gas is used, more than a stag­ger­ing 310 mil­lion met­ric tons of car­bon diox­ide (CO2) are released into the atmosphere.

Oops!

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#need-for-pem-electrolyzers)**Need for PEM-electrolyzers**

For hydro­gen to con­tin­ue to feed half the world while keep­ing glob­al warm­ing below 2 °C, the pro­duc­tion of syn­thet­ic nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers must switch from fos­sil-based hydro­gen to fos­sil-free hydro­gen rather quickly.

How­ev­er, this requires many PEM-elec­trolyz­ers to pro­duce the fos­sil-free hydrogen.

Now you under­stand the con­nec­tion between fer­til­iz­ers and Smoltek.

You were prob­a­bly wor­ried for a while, as the arti­cle took you on a seem­ing­ly out­landish jour­ney through the his­to­ry of fer­til­iz­ers – from Sume­ri­ans through 1910s Ger­many to today. But as you now under­stand, there is a purpose.

Many think hydro­gen will be used main­ly to pow­er cars and oth­er vehi­cles. Some know there are oth­er appli­ca­tions, such as stor­ing excess elec­tric­i­ty from solar and wind tur­bines. But most peo­ple miss the real­ly big appli­ca­tions for elec­trolyz­ers, and one of them is replac­ing nat­ur­al gas used by Haber-Bosch process plants.

## [](https://www.smoltek.com#smolteks-role)**Smoltek’s role**

Whether an elec­trolyz­er pro­duces hydro­gen to feed the world or pow­er a sports car, there is a problem.

The cell mate­r­i­al in a PEM-elec­trolyz­er con­tains irid­i­um. Today, 2.0 mil­ligrams of irid­i­um are used per square cen­time­ter. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is a lot, giv­en that irid­i­um is a scarce met­al prac­ti­cal­ly only mined in South Africa. (Some are also mined in Cana­da and Russia.)

The price of irid­i­um is sky-high and expect­ed to rise sharply with the increased demand, as it is prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble to extract more per year than already done.

This is why all man­u­fac­tur­ers and buy­ers of PEM elec­trolyz­ers want to reduce the amount of irid­i­um from the cur­rent 2.0 to an ambi­tious 0.1 mil­ligrams per square centimeter.

Researchers and devel­op­ers world­wide are work­ing fran­ti­cal­ly to reach this dream goal. So are we. And I would say that we are [ahead of the game](https://www.smoltek.com/investors/blog/smoltek-pem-cell-material-benchmarked-at-ecs-244th-meeting/6380/) thanks to our [unfair advan­tage](https://www.smoltek.com/investors/blog/smolteks-unfair-advantage/6582/).So, if you ever had doubts about the deci­sion to pur­sue the [hydro­gen mar­ket](https://www.smoltek.com/smoltek-hydrogen/) in par­al­lel with the [semi­con­duc­tor mar­ket](https://www.smoltek.com/smoltek-semi/), it’s time to stop doubt­ing. Don’t you agree?

### Read about the top image

The top image sym­bol­izes the purifi­ca­tion bath that arti­fi­cial fer­til­iz­er goes through. The crea­ture being washed rep­re­sents arti­fi­cial nitro­gen fer­til­iz­er. It is cov­ered in dirty coal and oil and stinks of fos­sil gas­es. The girl rep­re­sents every­one invest­ing in green hydro­gen, wash­ing the crea­ture clean, and bring­ing forth a kind crea­ture that helps human­i­ty feed itself.

The image is pro­duced using AI with the fol­low­ing prompt:

*Craft an illus­tra­tion in the style of seinen ani­me, show­cas­ing a mag­i­cal moment with­in a tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese bath­house. An inno­cent-look­ing lit­tle girl is depict­ed wash­ing a large, gen­tle crea­ture. The crea­ture is designed to appear friend­ly and non-threat­en­ing, con­tribut­ing to the whim­si­cal atmos­phere of the scene. Half of the crea­ture has been cleaned, its skin a vibrant deep green, with ethe­re­al light blue bub­bles float­ing upwards, enhanc­ing the fairy­tale aspect of the illus­tra­tion. The oth­er half is still grimy, coat­ed with coal and oil, from which dark smoke bil­lows, cre­at­ing a stark con­trast between the crea­ture’s two halves. The back­ground fea­tures the bath­house, detailed with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese archi­tec­ture, and is enveloped in a soft, mag­i­cal glow, sug­gest­ing a world where the ordi­nary blends with the fan­tas­ti­cal. The com­po­si­tion, light­ing, and col­or scheme are care­ful­ly cho­sen to evoke a sense of won­der, high­light­ing the mag­i­cal inter­ac­tion between the girl and the crea­ture, and immers­ing the view­er in a fairy­tale-like setting.*